We are happy to share that each of our existing maps and all maps moving forward have now been separated into zones. Players must break out of each zone in order to escape. By splitting the maps into zones, we are concentrating both players and monsters in smaller areas.
For investigators, this helps focus players to a smaller area, allowing them to concentrate on localised objectives. This means less cross-map travel and a greater focus on looting and completing objectives.
For monsters, of course, it also means that investigators are more confined, leading to more frequent encounters and chases.
We are well into the development of our latest level: Carnival Of Carnage. Almost all the major zones are now in, with only a few areas in need of completion.
Each escape has a variety of steps in order to complete it, with at least one major puzzle per escape.
This is the home-level for our next monster: The Grand Puppeteer
A creature of twisted and malicious fun, the Grand Puppeteer pulls all the strings. As he evolves, he can summon new puppets to do his bidding, each with a different role and function.
The Grand Puppeteer is a highly strategic monster. On his own, he is relatively slow and easy to evade. But in tandem with his puppets, he can easily overwhelm investigators, leaving them with nowhere to run.
Our original systems worked to an extent, though they had clear limitations that were difficult to overcome. We have now separated each of the AI’s senses into separate systems. This allows NPCs to make better judgement calls that feel more rational.
Sound is an important part of the game and is often what initiates a chase. We felt that sound events weren’t being clearly communicated well enough. To address this, we have created a new system that visualises sounds which can attract the AI. Players will now see distortion effects when running or when triggering noise traps which are also visible to hostile monsters.
All the hiding places have been updated to a new system. Players now have better camera control while inside hiding places and will no longer experience potential issues when moving in and out.
Hiding places are now also a lurking location for some Fear Spawn. Careful not to open a hiding place with a Fear Spawn inside or they might jump out at you.
The systems that handle spawning items and loot in the world have now been brought together under one umbrella system. Previously, items that spawned in boxes were handled differently to how items on bodies or loose items were spawned. This meant there was a lot of variance in terms of how many of each item could spawn on any given playthrough of a map.
We now have full control over how many of each item should spawn, given various conditions such as game difficulty and map type.
The new highlight system offers a lot of benefits. In addition to looking extra fancy, the new highlight system also offers a way of showing items that are yet to be placed which looks considerably better than the placeholder visuals that we used to have.
Highlight colouring is a lot more consistent and now automatically prioritises which highlight is most important to show in any given context.
All of the updates listed here (and more!) will be available on the Steam playtest as soon as we have a definitive fix for the multi-platform connectivity updates we are currently working on. We don’t have a firm date on when this will be ready to release, but will be providing updates as soon as we can.